Group says casino project would revitalize old power station

The vision KG Urban equity partner Barry Gosin has for a casino on the New Bedford waterfront is far from the bright lights of Las Vegas. “I’ve always been intrigued by buying older buildings and creating character,” Gosin said Wednesday at a New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Hawthorne Country Club in Dartmouth.

The vision KG Urban equity partner Barry Gosin has for a casino on the New Bedford waterfront is far from the bright lights of Las Vegas.

“I’ve always been intrigued by buying older buildings and creating character,” Gosin said Wednesday at a New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Hawthorne Country Club in Dartmouth.

The spot he has in mind is the site of the century-old former Cannon Street power station, a building he wants to rehabilitate and incorporate into a casino complex.

“The idea is not to let the casino define the town, but to let the town define the casino,” said Andrew Stern, managing director of KG Urban. “We view it as an urban development project that just happens to have a casino.”

KG Urban’s plans for a New Bedford casino, however, are complicated by a section of the state expanded gambling law that gives an eligible federally recognized American Indian tribe the first shot at exclusive rights to the southeastern Massachusetts market. The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe is proposing building a casino in East Taunton on land it has an option to purchase. KG Urban is challenging that section of the state law in federal court.

Describing the vision for his proposed casino, Gosin, who also serves as CEO of real estate firm Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, first discussed old buildings his company has bought over the past 30 years in New York.

“I guess the point I’m trying to make is that we are not a gaming company,” he said.

Gosin, however, does have some previous experience in the casino industry. A previous foray into the business led to the development of the Sands Casino Resort on a former Bethlehem Steel plant site in Pennsylvania.

“We loved the building, but didn’t know what to do with it, but we bought it,” he said.

Around the same time, Gosin recalled, Pennsylvania opened its doors to expanded gambling, and he decided to work with Sands to pursue a casino on that property. Maintaining the site’s historic character and connection to the community, he said, were priorities. He views the New Bedford proposal in a similar vein.

“We saw we could use gaming to do more than build a box in the middle of green space,” he said. “We saw we could bring energy back to a town and bring people back into the grid.”

KG Urban, Stern said, would clear the site except for the old power plant and an old foundry.

“Then we would tastefully develop the site slowly,” Stern said.

The complex, he said, would eventually have two hotels, a casino and a conference center. There would also be a harbor walk that would be open to the public. He projects it would support 2,000 construction jobs and 4,000 permanent jobs.

Page 2 of 2 - “The first thing people here said was, ‘It has to be welcoming to us, not just to people driving here from 50 miles away,’” Stern said.

KG Urban and its partners, he said, are prepared to invest $500 million in the first phase of proposed development and more than $900 million in total.

The New Bedford casino, though, is far from being built. Under the current law, which KG Urban is challenging in court, the state will only take commercial casino bids if it determines the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe won’t be successful in its pursuit of land sovereignty.

“The furthest thing from our minds was to be in a courtroom right now,” Stern said. “Hopefully we will be given an opportunity for bid for a license, just like companies … in other regions.”